“Us” and “Them”
| Author | Narayanan Ganapathy |
| DOI | 10.1177/1043986216656686 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2016
Article
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
2016, Vol. 32(3) 264 –284
“Us” and “Them”: Ethnic
© The Author(s) 2016
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Minority Gangs in Singapore
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DOI: 10.1177/1043986216656686
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Prisons
Narayanan Ganapathy1
Abstract
This research is the first empirical study to examine ethnic minority gangs which
have emerged within the Singapore prisons. It argues that the distinctive forms these
entities have assumed in terms of history, structure, subculture, geography, and
ideologies have to be appreciated in the context of the social, economic, and political
dynamics that exist in wider Singapore society, particularly between the formal
social control institutions and the institutionalized Chinese secret societies. What is
sociologically revealing is that although the latter operating within the prisons tend to
recruit non-Chinese inmates and is therefore more “out-group” orientated in their
recruitment strategies, memberships into ethnic minority gangs such as the “Omega”
and “Sarah Jumbo”—the two important minority gangs in prisons—are restricted to
inmates of the same “race,” pointing to a conceptualization of gangs in prisons as a
racialized phenomenon as far as the Singapore context is concerned.
Keywords
prison gangs, ethnic minorities, Chinese Secret Societies, policing, Singapore
Introduction
There is a dearth of literature on the phenomenon of gangs in Singapore, and the few
that deal with it are limited to the study of Chinese secret societies (CSSs; Blythe,
1969; Comber, 1959; Mak, 1981; Trocki, 1979; Wong, 1963; Wynne, 1941). There is
still relatively little empirical knowledge on gangs in prisons or the nature of their
constituency in the social organization of the prisons. This research seeks to examine
1National University of Singapore, Singapore
Corresponding Author:
Narayanan Ganapathy, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, AS1 11 Arts Link,
04-22, 117570, Singapore.
Email: socng@nus.edu.sg
Ganapathy
265
the two most important ethnic minority gangs, Omega and Sara Jumbo, and account
for the forms they have assumed in the context of the prisons in relation to history,
structure, subculture, geography, and ideology. Data from the study revealed that
Omega and Sara Jumbo—comprising exclusively ethnic Malays and Indians, respec-
tively—have emerged primarily as a response to ethnic consciousness and racializa-
tion processes engendered within the prison institution, where racial self-identification
becomes the only criterion in gang affiliation. Sociologically, this also begs the ques-
tion of why is it that gangs that have their roots in prisons tend to be ethnic minority in
nature. The ideology of ethnic minority gangs stands in contrast to the criminality
exhibited by the “imported” (into prisons) CSSs, juxtaposed with mainstream values
such as consumerism, elitism, and competitive success—values that promote the
strong economic orientation of CSSs.
This observation necessitates an analysis of gangs in prison (and in the free society,
as shall be illustrated later) as a racialized phenomenon warranting an investigation
into the power relations—historically, structurally, and interpersonally—that exist
among gang members of the various racial groups in prisons. Such understanding and
contextualizing of their experiences not only reveal the function of gangs as part of the
informal inmate code to “surviving” the prisons but chart important conceptual and
empirical linkages with the free and legitimate society. This study, as the next section
will reveal, challenges the position of the structural functionalists who have sought to
understand the processes of gang formation in prisons as merely a mechanism to cope
with the pains of imprisonment (Irwin & Cressey, 1962). Although this seems a logical
deduction, such an analysis obscures an understanding of the historical contextualiza-
tion of the lived experiences of inmates of various racial as well as class groups in
prisons, and the social hierarchies, rivalries, and ideologies these groups represent and
reproduce in the context of the prisons. Although this study primarily focuses on the
lived experiences of ethnic minority gang members where it is argued that they are
qualitatively distinct from the experiences of Chinese inmates, any analysis of ethnic
minority gangs in prisons cannot be complete without documenting the role of the
CSSs as a dominant player in the illegitimate society, as will be discussed later in the
section on “The Chinese Secret Societies and Ethnic Minority Gangs.”
Theorizing Gangs in Prisons
More generally, academics researching delinquent gangs in prisons have often invoked
the concept of prisonization to understand their emergence and proliferation.
Prisonization conceptually refers to the “process by which a new inmate takes on the
norms, customs, values, and culture in general of the penitentiary and learns to adapt
to the prison environment” (Clemmer, 1958, p. 298). This concept has influenced the
development of two important theoretical models—deprivation (Cloward, 1977;
Goffman, 1961; Sykes, 1958) and importation (Irwin & Cressey, 1962)—in explaining
the role of delinquent associations in the prison milieu. These two models, fundamen-
tally, have suggested that the emergence and importation of gangs into prisons are
functional to countering the numerous “pains of imprisonment” induced by the loss of
266
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 32(3)
liberty, goods and services, heterosexual contact, autonomy and security, and the psy-
chological threats to their self-conception (Sykes, 1958; Sykes & Messinger, 1960).
Delinquent associations safeguard against the threat and reality of physical violence in
prisons, which is often a consequence of material and psychological deprivations, and
against poverty through an “informal prison economy, involving the selling and con-
sumption of contrabands smuggled into the penitentiary” (Ross & Richards, 2002;
Toch, 1998).
Following the deprivation model of imprisonment, the myriad functions of delin-
quent groups in prisons instill in unaffiliated inmates the reality that membership in
delinquent groups is crucial as a “currency” to surviving incarceration (Flesher &
Rison, 1999, p. 237; Jacobs, 1974, p. 400). Within the organizational framework of
delinquent groups, members are allocated definite roles and can aspire to successive
levels of status through the display of manly virtues such as that of bravery or fearless-
ness, toughness, physical prowess, and loyalty to one’s group members, which allows
them to assert their masculine self (Ross & Richards, 2002). In contradistinction to the
prison institution’s attempt to “de-masculinise” its subjects or at least regulate mascu-
linity through institutional means such as providing legitimate space for sports activi-
ties during “yard time” and banning physical exercise in the cells, participation in
gangs allows members to subscribe to the ideals of an “aggressive” or “exaggerated”
masculinity where such performances allow inmates to attain status among peers and
imperviousness toward staff. This often assumes the expression of “rape, defiance
against custodians of control, sports and the construction of the ‘ideal type’ masculine
physicality” (Lockwood, 1980; Messerschmidt, 1993; Messner, 1989; Sabo & Runfola,
1980). More importantly, leveraging on the social platform provided by gangs, dis-
plays of masculinity offer symbols to resist the “mortification of self” within the prison
milieu (Strong, 1943, p. 564).
The “border crossing” image, which the concept of prisonization attests to, arises
from a normative conception of prisons as a “total institution,” denoting a place of
“residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut-off from
the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally
administered round of life” (Goffman, 1961, p. xiii). Similarly, Foucault (1979) saw
the prisons as a “complete and austere institution,” which “assumes responsibility for
all aspects of the individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday
conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind” (p. 235). For the prisoners, it entails a
transition into
a social world that is organized differently and centered around a different culture than
the everyday world left behind—a passage that is acknowledged by the prison culture
distinction between the world of the joint and the outside free world. (Jones & Schmid,
2000, p. 1)
This leads to a conceptualization of the prison community as a social system in its
own right, variously acknowledged as “primitive society,” “prison society,” “autono-
mous society,” “social microcosm,” “micro society,” “inmate society,” “segregated
Ganapathy
267
communities,” and “closed institution” (Clemmer, 1958; Etzioni, 1957; Jacobs, 1979;
Sykes, 1958; Sykes & Messinger, 1960), where it is isolated from the outside world with
its own language, leaders, laws, rites, and rituals. Members of this society are seen to
speak in “the pungent argot of the dispossessed and have their own vocabulary for every-
thing from sex roles to dis-positions vis-à-vis the official administration” (Sykes &
Messinger, 1960, p. 11). Yet, rather paradoxically, both the...
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